Kor's story
by Kenter
Summary: He was born thousands of years ago, he exterminated the precursors, he laid waste to many other worlds. But in this story, in this confusing story that plays with time, have you considered Kor's point of view ? Where did the dark leader of the Hora-Quan start ? A simple thing I wrote quickly, my attempt to make sense of Jak 2 and 3 and correcting the many continuity problems.


I was born on a distant planet, far from the one where I would eventually meet my most hated enemy.

The first thing I remember is the spawning. For us, Hora-Quan masters, spawning is painfull and early life is a nightmare. Lesser Hora-Quan, devoid of intelligence, get out of their eggs and are ready for life in a few days... For masters, it is different.

When Athar and Jolek passed judgement on Rin, he decided to kill himself rather than surrender to his peers. He laid off three hundred eggs. Master eggs.

Of course, the Hora-Quan are always led by three masters, so only one larva was going to survive. We battled for twenty-seven months, in the pools of eco near the corpse of our father, devouring him to regain our strength. Alliances were made, betrayals happened and I won. I devoured the other Hora-Quan, I devoured Rin's corpse and started laying my own eggs, my own brood to prepare to meet with my peers, Athar and Jolek.

They gave me a name, Kor. They accepted me as one of their own, the third master of the Hora-Quan. I was given a task : Warrior. Athar was the worker, who took it upon himself to build our civilisation and Jolek was our diplomat, who kept the peace between the three of us and decided how we would deal with strangers. They taught me about the Precursors who built our world, how the previous generation went to war against them, how Jolek negociated a peace treaty with them.

They taught me about our other ennemies, Precursors too, but tainted, Dark makers they were called. They hated the Precursors as much as our ancestors used to but our ancestors, I told myself, were foolish to not ally with the Dark Makers.

I asked why we went to war, they said it was because the essence of the Precursor made us more and more powerful but Dark Makers essence was too reduced by dark eco to be a worthy food. We all lusted after the essence of the Precursors, but Athar and Jolek were too cowardly. They feared the destruction of our race if we went to war. How I hated them... But their broods were twice the size of mine, and Athar had already eaten a Precursor, making him too strong for me.

I was two hundred and three years old when I left our planet and conquered the stars. I built a spaceship in secret and took my brood to the next unhabited planet, no Precursors were there but they were enough lifeforms to eat and for my brood to grow.

They were five billion sentient lifeforms on this planet. After a hundred years of war, they were all completly eaten and all the biomass on the planet was consumed by my horde. Our weaponery had grown strong enough through the knowledge I stole from the native.

Three hundred years after that, I learnt of a planet where five precursors were teaching the natives, forging the world, stabilizing the eco. I attacked.

Precursors were strange energy beings and fighting them proved a challenge. I understood why my brother and sister decided on that peace treaty.

I taught the brood to destroy the robots and machinery they used. And I personnaly discovered how to channel dark eco. They were extremely vulnerable to the dark eco, more than a Hora-Quan, more than a few lifeforms I had met. Truth is, without direct eco manipulation, killing a Precursor is almost impossible. Worse, I feared that the dark eco I used to attack them might turn them into Dark makers. Against a dark maker, what was I to do ? I could not yet channel light eco.

But enough, the first precursor to fall to my surprise attack fled, tainted a bit by the dark eco. His strange, blue-ish floating body now harboring a dark purple heart. I was lucky to be fast enough to eat him before he turned into a dark maker.

And what a feast it was. I could feel my power increasing tenfold, expanding like the night-flowers of my planet during the eclipse.

Eating his mind gave me a lot of his knowledge. Only twenty Precursors were left in existence untouched by dark eco. Their reproduction was very slow with only one egg every few millenia. I could exterminate them. I could devour their entire species and then use their knowledge and power to enslave the Dark Makers and rebuild the universe. Ever since the fateful day my jaws tasted the soul of a god, this has been my ambition.

A millenia of war on the pathetic planet they chose ended with my victory. With five precursors killed and eaten, I had exterminated a fourth of their race. I set out to find more.

On the planet they designated Psiora, I met the one I hate above all. My one enemy, Mar.

Psiora was where the rest of the precursors, alerted about me because I foolishly failed to prevent a distress signal from being cast, decided to make their stand. I was not surprised by their machinery, I was not surprised by their use of eco to create a race of orange creatures they expected to be servants but I was surprised by their « supreme weapon ».

The orange creatures were smart, very smart. Smart enough to use deception, something the precursors were incapable of doing. I sent my metal bugs ahead and saw them being built, listened to what the precursors were saying about the purpose of this race.

« We are losing this war because we allowed Kor to build a gigantic brood, we are losing this war because the dark leader of the Hora-Quan was born in violence, something we do not experience. Because he slaughtered his brothers and sisters in their spawning pools, his mind is that of a destroyer and we are builders. We need the ottsels because they will be material creatures, closer to earth than we are, and maybe they will be able to see a way to defeat Kor, a way we have not yet seen. »

He was right. My usual tactics of infiltration, sabotage, and then assault was challenged by the capacity of ottsel to anticipate me. The precursors had never envisioned the possibility of the precious races they built betraying them when I promised to spare them, but the ottsels understood the fragility of the mortal mind.

This war lasted thousands of years. I sent my metal bugs to assassinate the ottsels, I laid a master egg but made it inferior to me so that it would lead the metal bugs. I finally destroyed the robots of the precursors and assaulted the catacombs where they had been hidden. The ottsels betrayed their masters and fled. I learned later that the Precursors rushed their creation, giving them flawed minds. Some ottsels believed themselves to be Precursors, how queer.

It was at this very moment that I met Mar. A strange creature with two legs, blond hair but no fur, long ears, no shell, no claws. I laughed when I saw him.

« Is this the secret weapon you have built against me ? This pitifull creature ? »

He used a projectile weapon, something he built himself inspired by Precursor technology. He fought valiantly, he fought bravely and he lost. As I was about to deliver the killing blow, the Precursors teleported him outside of my reach. No matter. I pressed on, killing every precursor I could find.

After five thousand years, I had finally devoured the last Precursor... And I had been tricked. Two years after that, as I was searching their computers to learn more about their technology, I discovered their true plan. The Precursors sacrificed themselves, sent Mar away with the last of their egg. His fight against me simply existed because they wanted me to believe their last weapon was a failure. Worse, all of this was Mar's plan.

I called upon my brood, I had to avenge this insult to my pride and end the extermination of the precursors.

I arrived on the world Mar had chosen, no doubt because the dominant lifeform there looked like him. I led a small assault against him and once more was tricked. As our armies clashed at the brink of that world, he activated the weapon he had spent those years building. Strange rings bursting with eco energy.

I saw those rings open above my army and suck them inside of them. I tried to resist the pull and saw Mar walk up to me, unaffected, a smile on his face. I would have smitten the smug disgusting creature, had all my energies not been concentrated on resisting the pull.

« Those rift gates will be your tomb, Kor. »

I immediatly understood. They were based on teleporter technology but weaponized, without a way out. I would be trapped forever in a space between the spaces, in a world that was not. Outside reality. I cursed my own idiocy, I cursed my pride and swore that I would surrender that stupid arrogance, that I would never again assault directly without information about my enemy.

« I will come back boy. No power will keep me from the egg.

\- You will never find a way out. I will destroy every rift. Farewell. »

His cold blue eyes looked at me with contempt and I felt an anger that would never know any equal... But I still could act during those few seconds. I too had access to Precursor technology. While Mar was walking away from me, I activated a small portal device and targeted one the rift gates, teleporting it away from Mar so that it would never be destroyed. When he understood, he turned around, pulled out a strange ruby, that would later be called the heart of Mar, too late. The heart, as I understood, was the controller for the rift gates.

Trapped, I looked through the rift gate to see where it would lead... It seemed that the gate was in some sort of Precursor-style container, but I was not able to go through. It would be many centuries before I could.

Most were uneventfull until one day, as I peaked through the gate, I saw an old man with a younger one and a child enter. They were inside a flying machine which contained the heart of Mar and an other artifact. A precursor time-map, the one they used to chart the continuum before they realized that the past could not be changed and any travel in time would result in a stable time loop. After that, they repurposed their time map to observe event throughout time.

The child capted my attention. He had light blond hair and I could feel his strong affinity towards eco, an affinity too strong for the natives of this planet. I realized what he truly was : Mar's descendant. Mar was not of this planet, he looked like them, but he was a Precursor construct. His affinity to eco would obviously carry on to his descendants but... It should have weakened through the generation. Why was this boy's affinity to eco only slightly inferior to Mar's ?

I heard the old man dressed in wood talk with the older one, with grey skin.

« This is an old dark eco silo. If you are to become the dark eco sage, I believe this would be the best place to study. And that way you can protect the rift gate and the rift rider.

\- I still fail to understand why you do not protect it yourself.

\- I need those two to be far away from Jak. The boy... Well, it's not important. I need you to seal this part of the silo.

\- I guess I could... Reactivate the old lock. It would need something like a hundred power cells to open but I would love to know why...

\- Gol, stop asking questions. I'm an old fool, I have a right to be mysterious. Besides, this place is lovely, isn't it ?

\- Yes but... It feels pretty lonely.

\- Dark eco is dangerous. You can't study it near people, you know it's a disaster waiting to happen. If you feel lonely... I don't know, tell your sister to live here. Besides, the other sages will visit you. »

As I looked at the boy, I understood what his purpose was. Mar knew the egg would need centuries to reach maturity but Precursor eggs cannot hatch by themselves. Another Precursor must help.

They built Mar with the capacity to help with the hatching but since he was too short-lived to see the egg reach maturity, one of his descendants had to do it.

If I wanted to eat the last Precursor, I needed the boy. And I would wait.

Ten years after that the silo was opened. By the old man, Samos, the boy, an ottsel and a female organism of their species. I was surprised to see an ottsel but, as I looked through the rift, I understood that he used to be one of them. There were ottsels on this planet, probably turned mad by their faulty design, that experimented on eco. He fell into a pool of it and was turned into one of them.

They moved the rift and the machine that was clearly not of Precursor design but still carried the time map and the heart of Mar. If they were to press the heart, I would be free.

And they did. I screamed in extasy when I was freed. _Finaly, the last rift gate has been opened._ I looked at the boy, grown up, as I unleashed my brood. _You cannot hide from me boy._

And then, the string of bad luck that happened since I met Mar continued. The machine, the _rift rider_ , was activated and they entered my prison just as I was leaving it. The energy blast hurt me, ripping one of my wings and part of my tail. I hesitated to go back and take the boy but I saw two things coming out of the gate. The heart of Mar and the time map. Their crude vehicle had exploded.

 _They might have survived the explosion, if..._

The time map was showing something. The time map's purpose was not to observe, it was to transform the rift gate into a time portal. They were sent three hundred years in the future.

I raged but then I laughed as my brood was killing every living thing in sight. Three hundred years were nothing to Hora-Quan. They would come into a world completly under my control.

I ordered my brood to retreat. I was gravely wounded and needed to establish a nest, to refill my brood.

After ten years I was ready to start my conquest and find the place where Mar had hidden the egg but I had a surprise. Mar was still alive. Clearly, the Precursors gave him a superior lifespan compared to the local creatures. He had built a wall, an eco wall, around the village in which I manifested. We waged a long war, for I knew he had hidden the egg inside his city... And I decided to renounce. During that war, he managed to take back the heart and the time map. I did not care for it, he knew his old rift gate strategy would not work twice.

I would keep the city under siege, with periodic assaults while my brood would overrun the rest of this world.

One by one, the other nations of this world fell to my armies. During this time, I studied the Precursor technology to try to understand exactly how they built Mar.

I was not worried when he built his gun, meant to crack open my nest, for I studied and I knew something Mar did not. Mar was not immortal, merely long-lived compared to his people. He did not know how long he could live, but I knew that he would die before he could use the gun. With my hated enemy now dead, the path to the egg was opened. I realised that I did not need to wait for this Jak boy to come out. Mar had built a lineage, three sons, two daughters and a long line of kings.

I managed to enter the city, disguised as an attractive female to lure one of Mar's sons to me. When I tasted his blood, I was furious. His affinity to eco was far, far inferior to Jak's affinity. How could this be ? Tarin was Mar's son. Jak, I did not know if he was Mar's son or grandson or great-grandson. How could there be such a gap when they shared the same blood ? When it was highly probable that Jak's blood was even more diluted than Tarin ? There was no way that this lineage of weaklings could open the egg.

So I resumed the old plan. Wait for Jak.

The sixty-seventh king of Haven city, as they called it, was Damas. He was not as popular as his mother, being more of a warrior-type, but he was compassionate enough that the people were content. After all, Haven city had known nothing but siege, they did not have high standards when it came to their leader, as long as the leader was not losing ground to Hora-Quan, or Metal heads, as they came to call us, that would do for these people.

But as I was spying king Damas, I realised that his son, Mar, fourth of his name, looked familiar. The boy Mar looked exactly like Jak the first time I saw him, when he, Samos and the dark eco sage put the rift rider near my prison.

I understood : The boy Mar would be sent back in time, in the hopes that he would grow strong enough to defeat me... But his blood was still weak.

Disguised as a palace guard I came to manipulate events. Veger, a petty noble who worshiped the Precursor like some child sucking his mother's tit, was full of ambition and wanted to experiment with eco, to use eco to transcend his pathetic nature. I made him see the potential in Mar's bloodline and he kidnapped the son of Damas, just in time for a _coup_ to put Damas out of power and in exile while Praxis took the reign of the city.

Praxis wanted to experiment with dark eco, create dark eco warrior. When I heard that in my disguise, I needed all my energy not to laugh. The precursors had failed to experiment with dark eco, how could he do better ?... I could understand why he would use those methods, though. When he tried assaulting my nest, shortly after grabbing power, one of my children tore off most of his face.

I decided to use the boy who, then, was Veger's project. Things became clearer. Veger experimented on this Jak, or Mar IV, that was the reason why his blood was so close to Mar's, even though they were removed by many generations.

I needed to get my hands on the egg and the boy. I gave the Krimzon guard information about a boy that would come flying out of the sky, a boy with an affinity to eco. If Jak was tainted by dark eco with the baron's project, he would not be a danger to me. The dark eco would slowly corrupt his mind, making him unstable. Without Precursor technology to stabilize him, the darkness would weaken him. True, I feared the adult Jak who could channel eco and who was the descendant of my nemesis but I felt that he represented far more of a danger to me if he could open the egg and work with the precursor against me. This world was special, it was far too full of Precursor cities and facilities. If the people of Haven city were to be led by a pure heir of Mar, enhanced by Veger experiments, and a Precursor who, through their racial memory, would know the place and fuction of everything they hid on this world, I would risk destruction. I bid my time, entertaining myself by accepting brides from the baron.

It seemed I had the perfect plan : Have the adult Jak in the baron's custody while I sent my metal bugs to infiltrate the city walls while I kept the young Jak in Veger's custody where I could easily take him once I had the egg.

Then the plan failed. My metal bugs were exterminated and the ottsel was on his way to free his friend. Worse, the boy escaped Veger's custody through means I do not yet understand and was found by the underground resistance. So I took a new form, an old man who came from the wastelands and survived the destruction of his city by the metal heads. A cover story that gave me a lot of sympathy and I became the guardian of the younger Jak.

The shadow was Jak's guardian from the past, but younger. I understood perfectly, my plan would succeed, the boy would open the egg for me and the shadow would try to flee to the past in a futile attempt to change it. Poor Samos, he did not understood a simple truth : Time cannot be changed.

As the adult Jak escaped, I met with him.

And so everything is now coming to place. I sent Jak on stupid missions, using his hatred of the baron. For me, he destroyed the baron's eco supplies, pushing the baron to more extreme measures to find more eco to pay me, driving the citizens of the city against him. I even sent him to the drill platform where he sabotaged the eco walls for me. Then, I used a petty crimelord Jak was working with. I led him to the ruby key of the walls, convinced him that opening the walls to the metal heads would let him have his precious trophees while emptying the nest, making it vulnerable to an attack. Fool.

When we were arrested in Mar's tomb, I took the young Jak inside my nest and came back to the city, created a plausible cover story for the underground that the baron had the child and that I escaped through the Krimzon guard's incompetence.

And now I have everything that I want. The young Jak is here in my nest and the old one is coming closer to me with the egg.

I will kill him, force the child to open the egg, devour the last Precursor and then allow the young Samos to flee with the child. And this whole thing will begin again. Then I will kill Onin. I have no doubt that sending the child back was her plan, what a great pleasure to see her suffer the realisation that she was wrong.

Jak comes towards me, what a delight to explain my deceptions to him, to tell him how much I used him and how I would eat the last Precursor.

« You're forgetting one little thing, metallo-maniac, we have the precursor stone.

\- Not for long ! »

As my blast of energy touches Jak, he dies under a mountain of rubble and... He rises up in his dark warrior form. How ? My dark eco blast should have disrupted the balance of eco within his cells and killed him and...

Unless precursor technology stabilized him. Unless somewhere in the city there was a precursor oracle that helped him.

I have made a grave miscalculation.

This is why this planet was so important. This is why there was a time map here. Mar. He must have used this time map. The time map that was stolen from me by him, that he sent to a precursor temple in the desert...This map came from somewhere.

The map was created by the precursor, found in the present day by the adult Jak, will be used to send the young Jak back in time, will be found by me, will be stolen by Mar, will be sent to the temple...

But where did it start ? Who put it here ? Krew put it inside his machine, but where did he find it ? Probably through one of his wastelanders but a time map would be heavily guarded, nothing short of an army could penetrate the Precursor facility where they would put something this important.

Unless it was given. Unless someone else had played me for a fool. Someone who would have used the time map, someone who would have safeguarded the oracle inside Haven city... The precursor that will hatch from the stone ? Mar ? The ottsels that are hidden somewhere on this planet ? Who ? Someone played me.

Jak has proven himself strong. Too strong. The weapons they gave him hurt me, and he is nothing short of invincible when he takes his dark warrior form... Which is now big enough to face me.

I must flee through the rift gate. If they are to send the young Jak back in time, maybe I can...

I am Kor of the Hora-Quan. Throughout my millenias of existence, I have hunted the Precursors to extinction, my brood has made Dark Makers ships flee, I have laid waste upon seven different planets and destroyed countless billion lives. I am the son and sole surviving heir of Rin, I devoured my father's body minutes after hatching, I killed each and every one of my siblings. I will not end like this. I will go through the rift gate, bide my time, find an exit and nurture a new brood.


End file.
